Maureen Galindo wants to make one thing clear: She never said she wants to put Jews in internment camps.
“No,” the Democratic congressional candidate in Texas said in a defiant TikTok video last week. “I said I want to imprison the American billionaire Zionists.”
That clarification has done little to calm the firestorm around Galindo, a San Antonio sex therapist and one of the two candidates in Tuesday’s Democratic runoff for a newly drawn House seat. In an earlier post, Galindo said she wanted to turn an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility into a “castration processing center for pedophiles,” which she suggested would include “most of the Zionists.” The comments drew bipartisan condemnation and sent national Democrats scrambling to stop her in the race’s final days.
But the scandal was not entirely a surprise to those who know Galindo. Candidates who have run against her, a businessman whose project was nearly derailed by Galindo, and a former San Antonio City Hall staffer who used to spar with her at public meetings describe her as “out there,” “conspiratorial,” and “very angry.” And for some, that’s not a bad thing.
“There’s an appetite for all these types of things, just like with Marjorie Taylor Greene,” said Ricardo Villarreal, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for a different House seat in Texas and one of Galindo’s only four donors, according to her Federal Election Commission filings. (Two of the other donors are her relatives.) “She’s definitely got her supporters,” Villarreal said.
